After launching it by accident last week, Valve Corporation has officially flipped on the switch for Steam TV, the company’s new service for streaming game videos.

At present, it’s only got a single live broadcast available: the prestigious Dota 2 tournament, The International, which is taking place until August 25 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada.

In addition to the video stream, the web app displays your list of friends from Steam, and lets you tune in either on your own or with a group of pals, with your own private chat room alongside the broadcast.

The company noted in a blog post that it plans to extend streaming support to other games available in the Steam store through its Steamworks API.

Given that Steam already has a large audience of gamers looking to buy titles, and play and chat with friends, it makes sense to extend the platform to take up even more of their time with broadcasts.

But Valve has a lot of catching up to do: Twitch already has more than 15 million daily active users, and the Amazon-owned platform is reportedly trying to woo major YouTubers with multi-million deals. There’s also YouTube Gaming, and Microsoft Mixer to worry about – albeit to a lesser degree, as neither of those services have really caught on in the way Twitch has.

It’ll be interesting to see how Steam TV develops over time, and whether it can build up a community that will shop, chat, and stream all in one place. You can tune in right now with your Steam account to get a taste, while The International is on through this week.

In the aftermath of a school shooting that claimed the lives of 14 students and three staff members, students like Emma González, David Hogg, and Cameron Kasky soon became household names. They managed to snag the attention not just of their peers, but the populace as a whole as they toured the country in a push for common sense gun regulation. The right took notice.

As has become commonplace on social media, partisan politics got in the way of actual debate when National Rifle Association supporters began circulating an image of González ripping apart the United States Constitution.

The original image (left) versus the doctored image that went viral (right)

The image, as it turns out, was a fake.

Faked images aren’t the only hurdle in stopping the spread of misinformation, but they have, in recent years, become a key vehicle in facilitating the spread of misinformation. For anyone looking for a technological fix, stopping the spread of false imagery is obviously a great place to start. While we focus on the YouTube‘s and Facebook‘s of the world, each of which are floundering in their fight against the spread of fake news, maybe it’s third parties we should be looking to for an answer.

Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte, two UC Berkeley undergrads, think they have that answer, at least for spotting fake images. The duo recently developed a plugin, SurfSafe, that instantly checks photos against more than 100 trusted news sites and fact-checking organizations. The goal, of course, is to spot the fakes before internet users share them. The photo of González, for example, could have been snuffed out early on, before it was viewed, and shared, by millions. “The fake news we care about is the fake news that’s spreading virally,” Bhat told Wired. “If a piece of fake news is spreading, we’ll have seen it.”

He continued:

We want SurfSafe to become a solution that’s analogous to anti-virus software. We want to scan your news feed for fake news as you browse.

The solution is a simple one. When a user hovers over a photo, SurfSafe scans its entire database of digital fingerprints looking for a match. The algorithm quickly goes to work looking for the earliest instance of the image appearing on the internet. If it finds a match, it’ll surface the original image on the right side of a user’s screen. Users then have options to tag the image as Photoshopped, misleading, or propaganda — all of which will help train the algorithm as it goes.

The more people who use the plugin, the smarter it will get. Bhat says the average internet user often sees hundreds of thousands of images a day. The plugin saves the signature of all of these images, looking for subtle variations to the fingerprint, or hash, that accompany even minor edits.

If it’s able to attract a few hundred thousand users in its first year, its creators expect the database to contain more than 100 billion fingerprints.

It’s not a perfect solution, Bhat acknowledges this much, but it’s a good start.

The Undo Send feature in Gmail is a godsend for the keyboard clutzes among us who fire off emails too early. I can’t count the number of times I’ve used it to bring back messages that I hadn’t finished composing or attaching files to.

Now, Android Police has spotted the feature in Gmail’s Android app. It’s been around on the web and iOS versions for a long while, as well as in Google’s Inbox.

It isn’t clear exactly when it was introduced on Android – and whether it’s specific to a certain version of the app, or has been made available via a server-side change. But anyhoo, it’s here, and it works.

Once you’ve composed a message and hit Send, you’ll see a ‘Sending’ notification at the bottom of your screen, along with an ‘Undo’ button. You’ve got 10 seconds to tap on it and cancel the process; Gmail will then bring back the draft so you can properly finish what you started.

Unlike the web version, there isn’t an option to extend the time limit. Android Police noted that Google can supposedly ‘pull back’ messages sent to other Gmail users, while those on other services experience a short delay before they receive emails, and that’s what allows for this functionality.

In case the feature isn’t available on your device, you might have to wait a bit for it to be activated on your account, or you could try updating Gmail (here’s version 8.7 on APK Mirror) to the latest version.

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Google is indisputedbly the best search engine out there on the Internet, however there are a few ways by which you can customize Google and make it even better. I have got 3 best free Firefox extensions using which you can customize Google by adding extra useful information to your search results and remove unwanted informationlike ads, spam and click tracking so as to improve the overall searching experience. The following are the 3 best extensions for Firefox using which you can improve the search results.

1. OptimizeGoogle:

Using OptimizeGoogle, you can get rid of text ads from Google search results, add links from about 10 other search engines, add position counter, product results and more. You can even filter your search results to see dead websites (using WayBack Machine) and remove click tracking so that you can search anonymously. Here is a list of some of the other useful features of this plugin.

1. Use Google suggest (get word suggestion while typing)

2. Add more security by using https wherever necessary

3. Filter spammy websites from search results page

4. Option to remove SideWiki

5. Add links to bookmark your favorite result

6. Add links to other news and product search sites

To install the plugin, just visit the OptimizeGoogle page from your Firefox browser and click on the Download button. Once installed, you can enable or disable the customization options from the Tools -> OptimizeGoogle Options.

After you customize Google to improve the search results, how about adding a feature that provides a way to preview the website in the search results itself? Here is a miracle Firefox extension to this job for us.

2. SearchPreview:

SearchPreview (formerly GooglePreview) will insert thumbnail view of the webpage into the Google search results page itself so that you can take the guess work out of clicking a link. Just install the plugin, reload Firefox and you will have the SearchPreview at work. You can install this plugin from the following link.

OptimizeGoogle and SearchPreview have made our search results smarter and faster. Now how about safer? Well you have another Firefox plugin to make your search results safer as well. Here we go.

3. McAfee SiteAdvisor:

This is a free browser plugin that gives safety advice about websites on the search results page before you actually click on the links. After you install the SiteAdvisor plugin, you will see a small rating icon next to each search result which will alert you about suspecious/risky websites and help you find safer alternatives. These ratings are derived based on various tests conducted by McAfee.

Based on the quality of links, SiteAdvisor may display Green, Yellow, Red or Grey icon next to the search results. Green means that the link is completely safe, Yellow means that there is a minor risk, Red means a mojor risk and Grey means that the site is not yet rated. These results will guide you to Web safety.

SiteAdvisor works on both Internet Explorer and Firefox which you can download from the following link:

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If you are a BSNL broadband user, chances are that you are facing frequent DNS issues. Their DNS servers are just unresponsive. The look up takes a long duration and many times just time out. The solution? There is small hack on BSNL for this. Use third party DNS servers instead of BSNL DNS servers or run your own one like djbdns. The easiest options is to use OpenDNS. Just reconfigure your network to use the following DNS servers:

208.67.222.222208.67.220.220

Detailed instructions specific to operating system or your BSNL modem are available in the OpenDNS website itself. After I reconfigured my BSNL modem to use the above 2 IP addresses, my DNS problems just vanished! Other ‘freebies’ that come with OpenDNS are phishing filters and automatic URL correction. Even if your service provider’s DNS servers are working fine, you can still use OpenDNS just for these two special features. After you hack BSNL DNS servers, you will see a noticeable improvement in your broadband speed.

Noways, smartphones and tablets come with the toughest and most scratch-resistant touch screen panels, thanks to such materials like Corning Gorilla Glass. It takes a lot to break and damage them. This,on the other hand, is not impossible if you behave recklessly with your Android device. Here are some precautions to consider in using your touchscreen.
1. Only use your fingers or stylus, if one comes with the device, like the Galaxy Note 3 for example. The Sony Xperia Z Ultra allows you to use pencils on the display, however this should not be done with any other device.

2. Avoid letting your touch screen come into contact with other electrical devices. There are many people who think that magnets will damage your phone, when it fact it likely won’t. The only thing that a magnet might do is mess up your built-in magnetic sensor which is used for compass apps.

3. Electrostatic discharges, meaning a sudden surge of electricity between two connected electrical devices, could ultimately cause the touchscreen to malfunction. This might happen when your smartphone is placed near an object isolated to the ground that conducts electricity.

4. This may seem obvious, but do not tap your phone with any sharp objects or bang it to make it work if it’s being laggy. Your smartphone isn’t like your old TV set. Also, though you might get over excited while playing Candy Crush, do not apply excessive pressure to the display.

5. Ever heard of the term burn-in? This is what sometimes happens when you leave the touchscreen idle for an extended amount of time without deactivating the display. What you’ll see when you switch to something new is an afterimage, ghosting or screen burn-in, all terms apply here. If this is happening to you, check out how to fix a screen burn-in. To prevent this from happening though, set the lock screen to turn off after a certain amount of time in the settings of your smartphone or tablet under the lock screen section.

6. Invest in a screen protector, sleeve, padded bag or hard case for your tablet or smartphone. There are many cheap but effective ones that you can find on Amazon, WalMart, eBay etc. If you drop your phone, scratches are the least of your worries, but shattering or cracking can happen even with the most durable of panels.

7. Avoid exposure to direct sunlight. Leaving your smartphone or tablet with an LCD display out on the patio in mid summer can really damage the quality.

8. When cleaning your display, use a microfiber cloth, which is ideal for touch screens. You can even use the one that came with your sunglasses. Be careful if using a moist cloth. Simply dampen it slightly or breath on the screen and then wipe it down gently. If you do end up using water, make sure that it is distilled water since normal tap water often carries calcium and other types of minerals. Do not over-rub. Let your phone air dry if there is any water left over so that you don’t accidently push any liquid into the phone’s inner hardware.

What tips do you recommend when it comes to taking care of your touch screen?